Michael J McCann

A family saga that begins in County Armagh, Ireland, and follows the fortunes of the native Irish clan McCann, displaced from their traditional land on the shores of Lough Neagh and transplanted to Forkhill Parish until Arthur McCann and Ann Quinn pull up stakes in the early 1840s and immigrate to the New World.This is the story of my family, the generations that settled in North Crosby Township, Leeds County, Ontario, moved down into the village of Westport, and sent their children out to find their way in a rapidly changing world that was nothing like the one theyhad left behind.

As the worst storm of the winter settles in, a funeral takes place in the village of Westport for an elderly Toronto crime lord who retired several years ago to the quiet beauty of Rideau Lakes.Shortly afterward, a man is found brutally beaten to death behind the local hardware store, and Ontario Provincial Police Detective Inspector Ellie March discovers that the victim was an important employee of Dante Tassone, heir to the crime lord's vast empire.Stuck in a snowed-in village with dangerous organized crime figures, Ellie and OPP Detective Constable Kevin Walker search for answers that will connect Tassone and his rebellious son to a violent family struggle threatening the safety of villagers and police, as the bodies begin to pile up and a deadly pandemic looms on the horizon.

When human remains are found behind a barn on a property along the historic Rideau Waterway, Ontario Provincial Police Detective Constable Kevin Walker finds himself riding herd on a forensic anthropologist brought in by the coroner to supervise the removal of the bones.But as the wildly eccentric Dr. Ash Latimer excavates the unmarked grave, the bodies begin to multiply and Detective Inspector Ellie March is abruptly forced to recuse herself from the case. Her next-door neighbour, Ridge Ballantyne, may have known the victims, and General Headquarters decides that the possibility of a conflict of interest necessitates her removal from the investigation.As Ridge struggles to recover from a stroke, he must deal with the possibility that an old friend from Scotland and his young son may have been murdered five years ago and buried in an unmarked grave thousands of miles from home, while Ellie March fights an uphill battle against internal politics to return to the case.

During its 100 years of hosting minor league baseball, Binghamton has been an affiliation of either the Yankees or the Mets for 57 years and the names of the players who have passed through Binghamton and are members of its shrine read like a Who's Who of baseball in New York City, including such notables as Edgardo Alfonzo, Clete Boyer, Whitey Ford, Lefty Gomez, Bobby Jones, "Wee Willie" Keeler, Thurman Munson, Joe Pepitone, Bobby Richardson, Ralph Terry, and Tom Tresh. Some of the other shrine members profiled in the book who achieved national fame in the game include "Wild Bill" Hallahan, Ken Harrelson, Tommy Holmes, umpire and broadcaster Ron Luciano, and Bill Virdon. Over 748 players who have played in Binghamton have gone on to play in the big leagues, with the majority of those playing in the Big Apple This book profiles the members of Binghamton's Baseball Shrine and also discusses the history of baseball in Binghamton, from the Crickets, to the Bingos, to the Triplets and the current day Double-A team, the Binghamton Mets. The book is full of amusing stories, including the day Ralph Terry strutted like a peacock in Cooperstown, the day Johnny Blanchard hung up the phone when talking with George Weiss, and the day the fianc of Lefty Gomez flushed his engagement ring down a toilet Testimonials include: Ralph Terry, star pitcher for the Yankees in the 1960's: "I was 18-years-old when I arrived in Binghamton or my first year in pro ball, with a duffel bag in one hand and a game of Scrabble(R) in the other. This is where it all began and I remember it fondly." Steve Kraly, pitcher for the 1953 World Champion New York Yankees: "I am proud to have called the greater Binghamton area my full-time home since 1956, after I completed my second tour of duty with the Triplets. You'll travel along the historic crossroads of both Binghamton and baseball as you read this book and I trust that a smile will be your companion."

Kenneth Napier is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, but when he begins to write his autobiography, someone resorts to violence in an attempt to stop its publication. When Napier's literary agent is murdered under bizarre circumstances, Tom Faust is assigned by his Toronto employers, the Cage Intelligence Group, to track down the culprit and ensure Napier's safety at all costs. Suddenly, Tom goes from hunter to hunted as finds himself directly in the sights of a contract killer with nothing to lose.

Mark Heron's career as a successful cartoonist has taken him around the world, but as his seventieth birthday approaches, he decides to settle down in rural eastern Ontario in search of a quieter life.When Rosemary Nolan arrives on her Harley-Davidson, however, he must put his quest for peace and tranquility on hold. A young woman on a mission, Rosemary is searching for a missing man with an intellectual disability, and she believes Mark can help.However, Mark and Rosemary soon discover that other disappearances have also occurred over the past year, and they must face the horrifying possibility that a serial predator is on the loose in their quiet little community.

Available at auction for a low price, the Psalm Book was a weather-worn, leather-bound volume that time had not been particularly gentle with since its publication in 1812.Inside, however, were inscriptions written by the family that brought it with them to Canada from Scotland in the early Nineteenth century, and as it was passed down from one child to the next, each one proudly wrote in it.Who were the Fergusons of Numogate, Ontario who treasured this Psalm Book, and what became of them?

Someone murdered former professional hockey player Grant Burnham on his private woodlot north of Perth, Ontario. In a violent fit of rage, they beat him to death with a baseball bat made by his own woodworking company.Ontario Provincial Police Detective Inspector Ellie March must cope with an acute shortage of detectives as the Lanark County Crime Unit investigates, and while the loan of Detective Constable Kevin Walker from the Leeds County detachment helps, the unit struggles to work the case effectively.With no shortage of suspects, including a scornful ex-wife, a surly former business partner, and a next-door neighbor drawn to the athletic Burnham like a bee to honey, can the team prevent a vicious killer from getting away with murder?

Maddie Hubbard is trying her best to be a normal 20-year-old. She's taking online courses toward her BA in English, she's looking after her 12-year-old brother, and she's maintaining a very low profile in their late grandmother's house on Twilight Road.Unfortunately, she has a special ability that won't let her go. An ability inherited from generations of women in her family before her. And now she's seeing the faces of dead women, women somehow connected to the abandoned church and the parsonage next door that's home to Reverend Belinda Northrop and her son. Women horribly murdered and trapped in this plane of existence.She can't avoid their pleas for help, and she knows she's heading down a road she can't pretend later that she didn't travel. She's going to discover the horrible secret of the church, the graveyard, and the parsonage at the far end of Twilight Road.

In the Martian domed city of Elysium, Serena Keilor is a young social outcast, discriminated against because of her red hair, her smallness, and her mottled complexion. Unknown to those who revile her as a worthless dirt eater, however, she's a highly effective undercover operative for Martian Intelligence who's just been handed her most difficult assignment yet.Someone is selling Martian corporate secrets to Earth Intelligence at a time when the cold war between Mars and the motherworld is reaching a crisis point. The race is on to build an interstellar spacecraft and find the source of mysterious alien transmissions that could bring fabulous technological advancements to the winner, and the fate of Mars as an independent world hangs in the balance.Serena's job is to confirm the identity of the spy and his Earth handler before they betray Martian secrets and destroy everything that the five corporations controlling the red planet have worked for generations to build.Aided only by an artificial human who is a discarded prototype from the interstellar project, Serena risks her life to discover the identity of the spy while also uncovering an astonishing secret about herself and her unexpected role in the future of Mars

When Tom Faust retires after a successful career as an Ontario Provincial Police homicide investigator, he finds himself at loose ends. To give himself something to do and to head off an increased reliance on alcohol, Tom buys a decommissioned country church in Peterborough County, Ontario, Canada to renovate as a home -- his final stop, the place where he'll make his last stand.When someone hangs a body from the rafters, however, he realizes his homicide investigation days are far from over. He accepts a contract offer from a Toronto security and intelligence consulting firm as a private investigator in order to gain access to the ongoing police investigation, but when the victim is identified as a former suspect in a mass murder he once investigated, Tom must re-open the files of a 17-year-old cold case to track down a killer who has returned to his brutal ways.

On a cold morning in late April, a man and his dog discover the nude body of a young woman in the ditch alongside the picturesque Thousand Islands Parkway in Leeds County. The woman was stabbed fifteen times before being dumped.Detective Constable Kevin Walker of the Ontario Provincial Police discovers that the victim, Andie Matheson, worked for an old high school acquaintance of his. Kyle Baldwin now runs a charity that raises funds for mobile medical clinics in Kenya, but he had a brief affair with the victim several years ago that ended badly. Why did she continue to work for Baldwin? Did she see someone else after breaking up with him?At the time of the callout to the Parkway, Detective Inspector Ellie March is investigating the mayor of the nearby city of Brockville for alleged criminal wrongdoing. With two cases to manage, she and Kevin Walker must determine if the mayor is somehow connected to a wider circle of crime or if Kevin's friend, Kyle Baldwin, murdered his ex-lover in a fit of jealous rage.